Me: “hey, what do you think loofahs are made of?”
Don: “some sort of sea creature?”
Me: “hah! that’s exactly what I thought! But no! They’re a plant – like a cucumber!”

I learned this from Zero Waste Home. She grows loofahs. She went through a phase of gathering moss to use as a toilet paper replacement. It’s quite a book.

xxx

For years (years!) I’ve been cutting careful circles of baking paper to line the bases of my springform cake tins.

One day I realised I could just lay a large square of paper (straight off the roll) on the base and snap the springform around it. No cutting required.

D’oh!

Earlier this week I installed a challenging new art piece by an exciting emerging artist in the babies bathroom.

On Xmas Eve, I shoved a 16 litre bucket under their dripping showerhead and it was completely full in around 14 hours!

The contents of the bucket went on the garden, and fortunately the shower had only been dripping for a couple of days, but Holy!Goodness! that’s a whole lot of water wasted in those couple of days.

When Don grabbed the tools and opened it up, the washer in the hot tap was pretty much shredded – hence the art piece.

Keep an eye on your taps, folks!

After years of having to refer to the blog^^ for the date – we finally independently remembered the date of our wedding anniversary!

And Holy!Goodness! we’ve now been married for TEN YEARS!

TEN!

awww – so sweet

TEN!

Like us, long time readers** are likely wondering how this can be, and where their lives have gone in this period!

We low-key celebrated with a movie at Golden Age Cinema~~ and dinner at Longrain

xxx

^^ one of the reasons I keep at blogging despite occasionally thinking I should shutter it – it’s excellent record of, well, stuff
** (which is likely all of you)
~~ you should totally check it out

Xmas day was relatively sedate in ThePalace(OfLove).

It was just Don and I and the kitties – the offspring being in various exotic locales**.

I started the morning off with a short run around the block, then …

xxx

breakfasted on surprisingly delicious store-bought Xmas cake

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drank festive beverages – chilli berry boom tea + soda water

xxx

fed heather’s lovely very elderly kitty

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feasted on BBQ lamb leg and fatoush (10/10 – possibly the best Xmas dinner we’ve ever had)

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framed photos for hanging later in the week

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whipped up a couple of berry cakes

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admired our Xmas decorations

Also completed were a bunch of household chores, book reading, reviewing new music and generally pottering.

(I really do need to start busting out the proper camera, rather than the phone).

If this is what retirement is going to be like you can sign me up Right Now.

xxx

** Well, Joan was in an exotic locale (Venice), Joe/Frank and Bessie were in the slightly less exotic suburbs with the other half of their family (though exotic in that they have a quite nice pool).

I regularly use a couple of L’Occitane products and when I make a new purchase I’m forever being given free toiletries bags containing sample sized contents. Which … yay! free stuff! But then I end up with loads of wee bottles and tubes and sachets – most of which I never actually use.

current sample stash

Add to that the occasional Aesop purchase and other things here and there, and I have accumulated a small stash of stuff.**

Some of these things I’ve had for years – that white jar at the top right came from a spa visit in November 2015. I’ve never even cracked it open.

I’ll generally take a bunch of these with me when travelling, but despite my good intentions I rarely bust them out. One of the problems with the sachets is that, despite the seal, they eventually dry up. So often when I finally make an effort to use them they’re non-functional. That Nivea Q10 eye-cream white sachet at the top right is completely solid and will be chucked.

In 2019 my intention is to use up all of these samples – and to nicely refuse future offerings!

Sure, it would be really easy to just chuck them now – but that seems super-wasteful … earth’s precious resources and such. I need to write a post about that too!

xxx

** Two lots of pillow mist? Honestly, who uses pillow mist? (if you do, I’ll happily post it to you!)

Yesterday afternoon we were out and about: a quick lunch followed by tackling the grocery shopping for the holidays. As ever when leaving ThePalace(OfLove), I brought along my everyday handbag.** After a while my right upper arm started to become kind of sore/numb, but only when carrying the bag over my right shoulder – which is of course what one does, habit being habit. I attempted to switch to the left side, which felt all wrong and awkward. Every time I picked the bag up after putting it down, I’d automatically sling it over my right shoulder. Ouch. Repeat.

Once home, we pulled out the luggage scale and discovered I’d been lugging around 3kg. I’m not at all sure if that is normal, but it seems like kind of a lot.

Because I’m hoping^^ to reduce my acquisition of things in 2019, I’m not about to go out and buy a new smaller alternative bag, but perhaps I don’t need to carry quite so much around with me at all times.

So what is actually in there?

contents as at this morning – what a pleasing arrangement!

It’s all I can do to stop myself weighing each item to see which is the heaviest.

Don pointed out that I probably don’t need to carry around three pairs of headphones. I’ll concede this. There does seem to be a lot of redundancy (even double redundancy) in there.

Possibly I don’t need two lip-balms when I rarely even wear lip balm. Ditto, small packets of tissues.

The three pairs of glasses – sunglasses, distance glasses and reading glasses – definitely need to stay. I wish I could wear transition lenses, but I already own a very expensive pair which give me appalling headaches and make me feel kind of nauseous.

That thing that looks like an audio cassette holds a whole bunch of loyalty cards. I *probably* don’t need that. I rarely access the contents and as I’m trying to cut back on spending I shouldn’t need it. It’s cute though, so probably can go into my desk.

There’s a sample of hand cream that I was given at the November design market – needs to get out of the bag and into use. Actually, samples generally need a whole post to themselves.

Having a spare pair of socks has proven quite useful in the past. Probably stays.

The genmaicha (green tea with roasted rice) tea-bag is a recent addition, genius for the offsite workshop we were at last week where the only tea going was black. Stays for sure.

I possibly don’t need two reusable totes, but they’re both staying 1. because they’re light and 2. I’ve often needed both for post-SML grocery emergencies.

The unopened fan which will be essential in the coming months of old testament style hellfire conditions.

Definitely keeping the notebook, but both a black and blue permanent marker is probably overkill.

There’s usually also an umbrella which is not pictured.

Yes. All this for a 2 hour trip for lunch and groceries. Or a 30 minute commute.

Possibly my whole approach to what I require when leaving the house needs some reassessment. It’s as though I aproach each day as if I’m heading out for a spot of trekking in the Andes.

xxx

** it really is an amazing bag, brilliant quality, holds tons and comparatively inexpensive.

^^ hoping is a bit insipid isn’t it? How about I will reduce my acquisition of stuff in 2019?

ELEVEN DAYS!

This is where I resolve not to spend a single minute thinking about SML, not waste too much time on the InformationSuperhighway and Action those Action Items.

I’ve been troubleshooting wireless issues for a good deal of the afternoon. I updated the firmware on the access point (we were at v.16, latest was v.42 so slightly overdue) which worked reasonably well on the main floor, but connection is still somewhat flaky / non-existent when up at my desk.

Possibly TheUniverse telling me to stay away from my desk for the duration?

Thinking calming thoughts of foreign lands:

a reminder to future me to carry hand-sanitiser in my bag – who knows what crazy germs thai street kitties carry?

yoga hua hin

Today at our team Xmas lunch a reasonably tipsy Vincenzo** told me he sees me as very much an Earth Mother type.

You what now?

This is not entirely the image I’m going for.

Is it all the yoga?

xxx

** who I have known since he was a teen at school with Joan

At least I think it’s #6

I resolved to report back on how carting library books on holiday went …

I quickly read two of the three I took with me but the third was rather too gloomy and intense for holiday poolside reading. Fortunately I did also take the kindle so I could supplement with spontaneous downloads. I wouldn’t be averse to taking analogue books again, but it does rather take up space in the luggage, so maybe just one paper book and kindle the remainder.

I returned a quite large unread pile to the library this time around. Nothing was really grabbing me, some I didn’t even start, some were quite dreadful and quickly abandoned.

I tried a slightly different approach to borrowing this time – fewer books (less aspirations) and only selected from those that were on display. On each long row of shelving there is one shelf which is at a 45 degree angle, it holds 3-4 books with covers facing outward, almost laid flat (there’s probably some technical library term for this), they’re frequently rotated. I figure the librarians are trying to tell you something. Either that or they won’t fit on the other shelves.

1. Best friends forever : Margot Hunt
2. An American story – Christopher Priest
3. Not working – Lisa Owens

Ahhh – there was a #5.5. I borrowed Mark Lawson’s The Allegations after really enjoying The Deaths.

This should be enough to keep me going through the holiday break.

Surprisingly, knocking a freshly made pot of coffee over the floor next to my side of the bed first thing in the morning did not portend a dreadful day.

Fortunately, because we are that sort of family, we have a many old towels saved for just such occasions.

We are also the sort of family that really shouldn’t ever have carpet.

xxx

As a kind of towel-related aside, I used to follow the slow your home blog until I read this post about ridding the house of excess towels. This was such a perfect example of the nonsensical Minimalism Arms Race that I stopped reading after that.

Really, truly, you can never have enough old towels.